Dr. Dennis Cummins—From Applause to Revenue: How to Turn Speaking and LinkedIn Into a Predictable Business Growth Engine

Dr. Dennis Cummins  0:00  
The Thought Leadership part comes from when other people know about it, because you're not a thought leader, unless you're leading some other people. You're not the industry guru or the industry expert, until other people say that you are. And how are they going to know, unless you get that message out there.

David Bush  0:21  
Welcome to the Business Builders playbook, the show that breaks down the systems and strategies behind Predictable Revenue Growth to win in business. In each episode, we're diving into the proven strategies that separate the winners who scale from the losers who fail. This show is sponsored by bdr.ai the AI powered business development platform that automates your outbound prospecting so you can focus in on closing deals instead of chasing leads. Let's get started, all right. Well, welcome everybody. My name is David bush, and today I get a chance to be one of your co moderators and panelists on today's presentation on how to turn speaking into authority and LinkedIn into a predictable growth channel. And Dr Dennis Cummings and I are going to be sharing some of our experiences, education and expertise based on real life scenarios of what we've been able to improve in our own business and our own speaking opportunities and LinkedIn online presence. And so I won't be referring to Dr Cummings as Dr Cummings every single time, because he's a friend. I'm going to call him Dennis. So Dennis, super excited to have you on here with me to talk about this topic. We've got over 200 people that have shown interest in attendance saying that they're attending the event, and I'm excited to jump in today, but talk a little bit more about why you think that this topic is so powerful, and why so many people are interested in this topic?

Dr. Dennis Cummins  1:45  
Yeah, great. David, I'm so excited that you and I get a chance to work together doing this as well. I mean, between, you know, I mean, you know, because we're together all the time, you know, my big thing is about using speaking as a tool to to increase your authority as a thought leader. Your expertise is helping people develop their business like business consulting on how do I get my message out there and how to do things. So this is like kind of for those of you that are watching live, or you watching the recording, this is the one two punch on how to really drive your success rate through the roof. So I'm thrilled to be here my expertise. For those of you that are not familiar with what I do, I am the owner of a company called Pro speaker Academy, and it's designed to help business owners and executives and thought leaders increase their presence, their influence and their impact around the world, using speaking as a marketing tool. And just so we're all clear, I'm not out there to teach you how to become a keynote speaker. That's not what I do. I help you design and deliver promotional messages so that people know what you do, and they know how you can help them, and then they have a chance that what I like to say is, is I teach them how to do Invitational selling, rather than pushing your product out there and always hunting for the next client. How about you just sound so cool that they start to come to you. And that's what I love to share with people.

David Bush  3:16  
And we put this into the description of the event, is that most, most professionals struggle with one of two problems. They're having conversations and they're being asked to speak in public, but they're not actually turning that into actual business opportunities and revenue, or they are using LinkedIn and or they're using LinkedIn, but their outreach and content feels random manual, or just flat out ignored. And so what we hope today is that you're going to walk away with some very key strategies, tactics, tools. Obviously, this is a topic that you know one hour can hardly do it justice, but Dennis and I are going to feel like we're going to bring you the best of what we got. And I'm going to start off with just focusing in on Dennis's expertise in education, and just say, Why do you think that so many talented professionals are just struggling to stay visible and unable to convert those speaking opportunities into real business conversations and deals? Well, there's a

Dr. Dennis Cummins  4:14  
whole, I mean, there's a whole bunch of reasons behind that, David, but I think number one. And this is true if you search just about any of the lists of top fears. And there are number of lists all around the world, but the fear of public speaking ranks in the top three on almost every list. And if it's not the top three, it's in the top five, and some of them, it's the number one fear. So I think for business owners, you know, we're great at what we do. For those of you that are watching right now, you're great at what you do, you have a gift to share with people that might be your product, that might be your service, that might be your your ability to consult or coach. For other people, it may be a product that you make for them, but the. Problem is, is that most people don't know who you are, and now, especially with the advent of AI. Now, AI is a tool, and it is an amazing tool. And David, you're going to hopefully share a little bit later about how we can use that. But the downside of using AI, and you and I have had this conversation, is that it can, if you allow it to, it can make you sound just like everybody else, and then you're no longer different, you're no longer unique, and nobody wants to do business with you, because you don't stand out from the crowd. You just blend in, you know? And David, you you know, we've worked together, and one of the things you shared was, hey, listen, this is a great tool, the one you that you work with and that your company helps business owners with as part of your your business consulting. It's a great tool for automating a lot of the menial tasks that we do day to day. But one of the things that you've been adamant with me about right from the beginning is, once they interact, stop the automation and connect with people like live. And I think that approach that you bring to your end of the business is very similar to what I bring to mind. It's about establishing a human connection that people can feel. And this is these are really the three things that people want to feel. They want to feel, number one, that you understand them, that you understand what's going on for them. What are their needs? What are their struggles, what difficulties are they having? Number two, they want to know that you are or understand the solution to their problems. And number three, what to do next? They need to know what's the next action step. Why should they choose you over everybody else? And from my point of view, getting in front of a room and speaking about that is by far and away the highest converting marketing strategy of anything out there, if you can do it. And so why don't people do more of it? I think number one, it's fear, and number two, it's skill. They just don't understand how easy it can be. And that's that's the real trick for it, right there.

David Bush  7:13  
Yeah, I heard somewhere along the way that that fear is actually a learned fear. It's not a fear that you were born with. Matter of fact, I mean, many of us have it, but it's not because we were born with it. We're only born with two fears, the fear of loud noises and the fear of falling those are the only innate fears that you're born with. Everything else that you're scared of is a learned fear that you've had you've given permission to be scared of, and oftentimes, you know, Zig Ziglar says fear is false evidence appearing real. And many of us have allowed this false narrative or this fictional story to be created around maybe a negative experience that we saw, you know, we had the awkwardness of somebody that got, you know, laughed at or made fun of, or they failed in front of a big crowd, and that became a negative feeling about speaking, and we said we never want to do that, but it's not, oftentimes true evidence or fact that has led to the thought or the fear that you have. And so that's a big one to get over and to get overcome and to overcome. And the only way we're going to do that is by learning the facts and then believing in those facts and acting upon those facts, and then once you have that thrill, or that excitement, of actually generating attention and traction and business from it, then it becomes almost like a runner's high. You can't stop doing it, because you've now found this fun thing that you get to do that leads to business opportunity. So let's talk a little bit about the difference between attention and traction, because there is a massive difference when it comes down to generating revenue from talks. Sure.

Dr. Dennis Cummins  8:49  
Well, let's just think about, you know, let's think about social media for a while. You know, there are always people that are influencers out there, and they've got, you know, a million followers, but zero sales. So they've got attention, but they've got zero traction, right? I'd rather that I had 50 followers that were all engaged and wanted to learn and wanted to go to the next step. But how do you convince them to do that, and how do you invite them to follow you along that path. That's the strategy. You know that well? Strategy number two is, how do you invite them along? Strategy number one, where you come in, is, how do you find them in the first place, right? Because it's you have to have both of those. Number one, you've got to attract them. But then the real key is, well, what are you delivering? What sort of value. Are you bringing to that audience so that they can say, Huh, wow, I really like that. How do I move forward with you? What's the next step on doing that? So that's how using that speaking as that tool to enable that to happen is great. But you also need places to speak, right? You need to give out. There. Now, the cool thing is, because of the automations that you promote for business development, there's a lot of great ways to get in front of great people, but you can't It can't end there. That can't be the only thing they do. They need to have that that next step. So I think there's two things that people need to do. It is, and I'm just going to backtrack a little bit. I know I get a little squirrely, but you said, you know, the we're only born with two fears, and fear of public speaking isn't one of them. We're also not born as professional speakers, right? I tell this story all the time. I you know, I was a doctor of chiropractic for 23 years. Ran a couple successful offices in New York, and I transitioned. I left chiropractic to become a professional speaker. When I started, I sucked. I was awful, and it was horrendous, and I screwed everything up. But I knew that I that I wanted to do this like I knew it was something that was important to me. So we're not we're not born as great speakers. We're not born afraid of it. It is that learned behavior. And the problem is people are afraid of feeling dumb. They're afraid of that embarrassment and that shame, which comes across from looking stupid in front of an audience. Trust me, any audience that's watching you is going to be Wow. I'm so glad that's him instead of me, because it's most people's number one fear. They're so overwhelmed and amazed that you're up there. No matter what you do, it's going to be good, but if you get good at it, well then it becomes great, right? So the only real things you need to get better at this is, number one, what is the skill set? And number two, then the mindset, right? You put those two together, what are the skills? And then what is the thought process? And for me, and what I share with clients is your thought process is I can help you. You know, for those of you that are watching right now, if you're struggling with your business, you're struggling with marketing, you realize your Google ads and your Facebook ads and your LinkedIn ads aren't converting like they used to, there's a better way. And David and I can help you with that. All you have to do is reach out and ask. We're here to do it. And part of what we're doing today is we're letting you figure out and find out who we are, so that you can decide, I like these guys. Maybe, maybe we'll have a conversation after this workshop, this webinar.

David Bush  12:23  
So if this show is resonating with you and you're ready to take action because you want to scale your business faster, smarter with more AI and technology and less labor, check out. Bdr.ai, we help entrepreneurs and executive sales leaders to automate the grind of prospecting so you can focus your time on closing deals and growing revenue, where you should be spending your time with AI powered data, digital outreach, automation and done for you, prospecting systems. You'll connect with more qualified leads, book more appointments and build Predictable Revenue without adding more hours to your week or the week of your staff. Visit BDR today and discover how our AI prospect finder and digital BDR agents can help you to build your pipeline and your profits. Visit bdr.ai, where business builders learn how to automate and scale their playbook. Yeah, I'd love to see it inside the live audience and get people to put into the chat. You know, if you are struggling with the fear of public speaking, put a one into the chat. I'm just kind of curious of how many ones that we actually see. And if you're not afraid of speaking in public, put a zero in the chat. I'm just kind of curious what the comparison is.

Dr. Dennis Cummins  13:37  
And while those and by the way, not just speaking, David, how about the fear of technology, right? Because, you know, technology is not my jam. The speaking is my jam. You know, when we started working together, it was, it was all new, and it felt so awkward. But anytime we try something new, it's going to be awkward at first, and it was amazing how easy it was to work with you and your team. Yeah.

David Bush  14:03  
And then the same thing goes with speaking right is if you have a good coach, if you have a good mentor, somebody that can give you some of those key indicators that are going to lead to more successful outcomes, so that you don't feel like that you're wasting your time, and you don't feel like you're just failing in times of trial you're actually experiencing, and you're saying, You know what, I'm getting better at this opportunity. And so, you know, we talk a lot about trust, credibility and authority is one of the key components, whether you're speaking in front of a large group of people, or wanting to have more opportunities to close more transactions from your presentations and your speaking opportunities or your online presence, trust, credibility and authority will always lead to higher revenues if you have them, if you don't, you won't. So talk a little bit more about how do you position yourself as an authority before any sales conversation begins.

Dr. Dennis Cummins  14:57  
Well, so I have a book coming out. In a couple of months called Invitational selling, right? I am not a fan of the hard sell. I'm not a fan of the hard push. I'd rather just invite people to buy. And in order to do that, you need to do three things, connect, convey and convert. So the connection part is having an honest conversation about, you know, asking questions about them and truly being curious, not just asking a question, not a probing sales question to get data so you can make your pitch. It's about really listening and understanding, and then it's about conveying your value and your expertise and and think about a conveyor belt. It goes out and then it comes back. It's about allowing them to convey their needs and their desires and their hopes and their goals and their fears with you, so that in the Convert page, you invite them to take the next step, you invite them to convert to something different than what they're currently doing. And it's sort of, you know, if you follow this natural process on there in this goes for speaking and talks. You know, I always say open strong. You know, less is more, and close with benefits, connect, convey, convert, open strong. Have a great introduction about who you are and why this is important to you. You know, I share a story that so my daughter Lauren used to make these little bead bracelets. All right? So there she made these ones. These have stars, butterflies and hearts, right? She made me this one. This one has just hearts on it. My daughter Lauren, some of you know, may know, but my daughter Lauren passed away at the age of 17, about 10 years ago. But Lauren was amazing. She had a brain tumor, she had lost her vision, she'd lost the use of half of her body. She really couldn't walk. But she would make these bracelets, and all she wanted to do was hand them out to people. And her big thing was, you know, Hey, my name is Lauren. I make these bead bracelets. They're stars, butterflies and hearts. And she said, I put love, energy and power in every bead. And then she would say, they're $10 each. How many would you like? Right? And in Invitational selling, like, the story of me and her on the beach selling these bracelets is foundational to something that I'd been doing for years, but I never really, you know, I watched her do this, and I realized, like, like, all she wanted to do is make people smile. Now, by the way, she gave away more than she ever sold, but she did sell them all the time for 10 bucks a pop. It was amazing. I have traveled all over the world. I've been on every continent but Antarctica. Speaking. I've been on 14,000 stages over the last decade plus. And I have never been in any country, in any city, anywhere on any continent in the world when someone at some point didn't come up to me and say, Hey, is that I have one of Lauren's bracelets, or I know somebody who has one, like everywhere in the world. And for me, I was thinking, if this little girl who was blind and couldn't walk and couldn't use half her body could have that kind of an impact on the world, what could we do? Right? And David, I know you believe the same thing, because you're helping people reach more people, you're helping them expand their impact. And there's no question in my mind that our ability to deliver, to share our information with others is what's going to make a difference? AI is not going to do it. You know, we need to know, and your clients need to know, and your prospects need to know. Why is this important to you? Because I want to make I want to know that it matters to you before it's going to matter to me. Like, do you have skin in the game is this important to you? And for me, it's I really believe this. I believe each and every one of us has a gift to share, and when we don't share that gift, we cause suffering. And most of the time when we're unwilling to use technology like you offer or we're unwilling to get out in front of a room, whether, now, by the way, whether that's a live group of people, whether it's a webinar like this, or whether it's on social media, when we're afraid to do that because we're worried about what they might say, I'm going to say, shame on you, because that means you are more concerned about you than about the people that you could help. And I don't think that's cool. And my mission in life is to give people the skills and the confidence and the competence to feel totally comfortable in front of a room of people sharing what they can do and sharing with with the people who want that help.

David Bush  19:52  
Yeah, so good. And little insider tip for those of you that are watching live or watching a recording, you. Dr Cummins just did something that is connecting with all of you, and he shared an inspiring story that was a true story that's very impactful, right? Telling Lauren's story about how she was able to do these types of tactics and strategy in her own journey is a way of connecting to show that this is an example of something that was meaningful for him and his family, but it was also something that all of us could remember, right, those little bracelets that Lauren was doing, and that she was actually, you know, asking for the opportunity. She was asking for people to invest and I think that that's so important, that people understand the power of a story. And so, you know, sharing a real life example, a real life opportunity that you were able to transfer information to somebody without telling them the information specifically, you embedded it into a story. But what are some other things that speakers do unintentionally that weaken their authority during talks?

Dr. Dennis Cummins  20:53  
Dennis, there's a lot of things that they do unintentionally. I'm going to say probably the thing that happens most often is they don't speak at all. So let's just call that one right, because they're just afraid of it, so they don't do it right. So that's number one. Then they go to the exact opposite end of the spectrum, and they over share. They just talk too much and it they dilute their message, and they confuse their audience, and their audience does not like being confused. And so you've heard the expression in sales, confused patients, confused clients don't buy right? Confused consumers don't buy. When you over share, when you're telling them too many things, then you're just giving them too much to think about. Like and that's that's an issue on there. So I think those are the two things. And finally, the last one is they just never have a call to action. You know, they had great information, they didn't overshare, but then they forgot to tell me, what do I do next? You know, if you're waiting for me to say, oh my gosh, David, how do I work with you. Well, that's wonderful when it happens, but sometimes it's just a lot easier and faster if you just tell them how to so here's what if you'd like to work with me, here's what you do now, right? We're going to do this at the end, but if you'd like to have a conversation with me, it's www dot speak with dennis.com speak with dennis.com super easy. I just made it easy for you to follow through. Those are the simple things. Like, you can make it easy for people to do things with you, but you have to remember to let them know those things.

David Bush  22:35  
There it is. Folks, connect, convey and convert. Dennis just did it. He just talked about it. Well, we got a lot more content to dive into, so I want to talk a little bit more about the difference between being seen as a trusted advisor versus being an expert on a particular topic. Because there's a difference.

Dr. Dennis Cummins  22:53  
There is a difference, and it's not that much of a difference. David, I think being an expert is based on your preparation, right? I mean, you've done years of study, and you know, when I worked with you and your team on on the back end and the infrastructure and the technology, I mean, there is no doubt that you are an expert at what you're doing, right, far beyond my skills and capacities. And you know, you've made it easy for me, which I greatly appreciate, because that's not my skill set, right? That's not my expertise. So expertise is based on your experience, your training, your knowledge, you know, what have you studied? What have you developed? All that sort of stuff. That's the expertise part of it, the thought leadership part, comes from when other people know about it, right? Because you're not a thought leader unless you're leading some other people. You're not you know the industry guru or the industry expert, until other people say that you are. And how are they going to know unless you get that message out there. Now, if you're going to use, and I know you and your team rely heavily on LinkedIn as a strategy, that's a great way to get some messages out there. And by the way, you mentioned this earlier, David, which was brilliant, not just randomly spraying messages like they're structured and they're designed in a very specific way, like I've got a three day event coming up called building your business from the stage, screen and social, and in it, I talk about, we're going to talk about, you know, you're going to design your talk, and it's designed. Great talks are not given. They're designed, just like great automations and great business plans. It's not just, what are we going to do today? I'm going to post on Facebook tomorrow. Oh, post on LinkedIn. You know, hey, I had McDonald's for lunch. Let me take a picture of my Big Mac like, that's not going to that's not going to get you business. I mean, that's great. Thank you for sharing your picture of your dessert. I don't really care and but. It's not going to make me do want to do business with you what is, and this is what you know you and I have discussed in the past, is sharing information on LinkedIn, posting articles that illustrate your expertise without necessarily, it's not a sales pitch, it's a demonstration of your expertise, and that is where thought leadership comes in.

David Bush  25:26  
Yeah, I like the quote that says casualness leads to casualties. And when it comes down to businesses, that if you're casual about your business plan and your business development strategy or your speaking opportunities, you're probably going to lead to some casualties when it comes to, you know, deals is you're not going to you're not going to have deals that are going to be successful. And, you know, there's a lot of speakers out there that are generating applause, but they're not generating business. So why do you think that that is, what do you think is the key indicator of a business outcome, versus just applause?

Dr. Dennis Cummins  26:00  
Well, again, number one, it comes down to, did your talk do what you wanted it to do? You know, and you actually use this phrase yesterday when we were chatting, and I use this all the time. Start with the end in mind, if you're going to get it in front of a group of people and you're going to talk, well, my question is, why do you love to hear yourself talk, or you just want to do that stuff, that's fantastic. But most of the time, like, there's three types of talks. There is the educational talk, where you're just going to go and do a training, that's one thing. Then there's the motivational talk, those are the keynote speakers that just go in and ah, everybody's great. They laugh, they cry a little bit, and then they leave. Fantastic. There's value for that too. My specialty, though, David is the promotional talk. It's when you do a talk to move people to make certain decisions on their own, of their own volition, but you do that by presenting things in the right way. That's really critical to make that happen, but where people fall short is in the follow up, right? So they do a great talk, and maybe they've structured it correctly because they understand that there are components that you cannot leave out of a talk. You know, if you wanted to make a Big Mac, right, to all be Patty, special sauce, lettuce, pickles, tomatoes, all on a sesame seed bun. It's got all that, but you don't have the sesame seed bun. You leave off the pickles. You leave off, you know? And now it's not a Big Mac anymore. Now it's something else. You got to have all the pieces for it to be, right. Lot of people don't know the pieces. But then here's the part where I think your team and your expertise is so great, is what's the follow up? Right? That's where the ball gets dropped a lot, you know? Yeah, there's the front end, and that's, that's my jam over here. Did you put the right messaging in the middle of that? Did you establish your thought leadership, your expertise? Did you establish your empathy and your understanding of the audience? Did you pre handle all of the objections that you know that they're going to have. Did you do all of that stuff before you ever, ever talked about what you got? And most of the time, speakers have no idea about any of that, because nobody ever taught them, and that's not what they do, right? There's, there's a niche to that. I think it's a very valuable niche for those that do it. It's great, but then the problem is, well, how do you follow up? So I think that's a great you know, question for you, though. David, so, you know, people are out there. They're going to get in front of a room, they're maybe they're going to have an opportunity to get on some social they're going to be on LinkedIn, or whatever social media they've got, you know, what kind of strategies are you sharing with your business clients, to to follow up and and to continue to nurture, and not only nurture but support those prospective clients?

David Bush  28:53  
Yeah, that's great question. I would say that the very first thing that everybody has to decide upon is that you know, are you going to be a content creator, or are you going to be a person that is a conversation creator? Because there's a difference in how you are going to handle your social media. Personally, I am not a content creator. While I do post content, I don't think of myself as a content creator, and there's a whole different model to how you use social media when that is your strategy, and you need to learn the best practices and strategies to become a content creator. And that's a long game that's not oftentimes a fast, you know, immediate path to a really large income and lots of transactions and opportunities. It's oftentimes somebody that has to be committed to being consistent and growing and learning through content creation and testing and marketing. There's a lot of analytics that go into that, and most people just are not committed to doing that. They may have committed to posting content, but they haven't. Committed to actually analyzing the results of that content. And if you aren't committed to that piece of it, you're basically wasting a lot of time and energy trying to post content that's not leading to conversations. Now, if you're going to commit to becoming a conversation creator, that's going to be where you're going to be doing, what Dennis was just talking about is that you're not only posting content, you're also following up on that content in the direct messages, you're engaging on individual people's posts, and you're making strategic comments that are both edifying and valuable to the content creator, whoever posted that content, and then you're also creating conversations in the content. So what I like to do inside of content on somebody else's page is that I'll go into their page and I'll read a post that they've created, and I'll comment on that post based upon, you know, authenticity. I'd edify the fact that they shared something that was valuable, and then I'd ask the simple clarifying question that they could answer, that they would want to answer, like I don't answer I don't ask a question that would just benefit me, because then they may not have the relationship to want to take the time to benefit me, but if I ask a question in a comment on a post that creates a conversation that not only I would benefit, but that other people that are on the post would benefit, and maybe they would basically look bad if they didn't answer the question, because I was asking a question directly correlated to their content. I wasn't self seeking, and I wasn't trying to get a person to, you know, get into a conversation with me. I was asking something that was clarifying to their post and maybe added, added to the additive to the actual post that everybody would benefit from. And that would be something that would be extremely valuable. And if you can become a conversation starter, and you can become our conversation creator, if we're using the same language, the direct messages, email, and then doing comments on individual posts of other individuals that you're wanting to build a relationship with, it's a totally different outcome, and I have found it to be more measurable in terms of income generation, and it doesn't take as long, because you don't have to have 10,000 or 20,000 or 30,000 followers before you can actually get a return on your time invested.

Dr. Dennis Cummins  32:27  
Hey, did? How do you manage? How does your team manage the the application of AI, right? And and while still maintaining the personal connection piece. How do you do that? How do you recommend that you know the people watching right now? Do that?

David Bush  32:47  
Great question. Well, we use AI as augmented intelligence rather than artificial intelligence, and so we use AI in a couple different ways. So one of the things that our AI does and our technology is that we help you to organize and prioritize and follow up with your connections, and it helps you to build individual connections by targeting the right prospects. So our technology will help you to find the people that you're already connected to, and then it helps you to organize and prioritize those individuals so that you can stay engaged in their content, where a lot of times, you know, if I ask the question, and some of you that are on here are probably going to struggle with this answer. But how many of your con or your connections currently, first degree connections? Well, let's just start with this. How many connections do you have? Personally, most people don't know. So how you find that answer is, you go into LinkedIn, you click on my network. It's usually at the very top, if you're on a desktop, and on the left hand side, it'll tell me tell you how many connections you have. So that's a starting point. How many connections do you have? The second question is, what percentage of those connections are actually target market, ideal client process, prospects or profiles of people that you can do business with, or who you want to do business with, and usually it's somewhere between 10 to 50% so if I was to ask you, who are those people, and do you have them organized in a list, you would probably say, No, that's what most people say. And so the reality of it is, is that every time you post content to LinkedIn or any social media platform, your content is only seen by a small percentage of your total connections. And the reality of it is, is that it's not the connections that are the most valuable to you, unfortunately, because those people are out of sight and out of mind and you're not engaging on their content, they're not engaging on your content, and you're not being strategic with starting conversations with them. Your content is not seen by the most valuable connections that you have, and that is a big wake up call for a lot of people. Many people are poking LinkedIn with a stick. They're playing with it. They're not actually doing it. And if you do it in a correct manner, and you use AI to help you to organize and prioritize and follow up and identify, like I have individuals that I have inside of my system, where the AI tells me when Dennis has posted, and the AI based upon a prompt that I have given it in a tone of voice, it'll be a positive comment with a question on the end of it, so I don't have to go searching through all of Dennis's content to find his most recent post. The system tells me when Dennis posted, and it tells me something that I could post on Dennis's post that would be positive and end in a question that would lead to a conversation, and I can choose to edit that post, I can delete the post, or I can post that particular comment on that post. And that, in itself, is a huge time saver, and it's something that allows me to do predictively, because it creates a list of prioritized actions. So that's one way that we're using AI, the other way we're doing it is, you know, a lot of times when conversations are started. So let's just say you send a connection request to a target profile that you want to build a relationship with. A lot of times people don't know what to say, when those people respond or when they don't respond. So our AI will help you to build responses. It'll help you to take context out of their LinkedIn profile and any messages that you've exchanged back and forth and based on a certain prompt, you don't have to copy and paste the whole profile of that person to another place. It's all embedded into the system. So it can go in there and look at Dr Dennis Cummins full profile, and it can look at his job title and what he does in the company that he works for, and it can create a comment or a message that is appropriate for his individual situation. And I don't have to think about it, it just augments my own ability to make a conversation continue on. So those are a couple of things that we're doing, again, augmenting intelligence, not creating this artificial conversation where you have a bot that completely takes over, you know, your LinkedIn profile. It's personalization at scale. Is the best way that I like

Dr. Dennis Cummins  37:13  
to say, Yeah, I like that. Because I was just going to ask, you know, one of the, one of the questions that comes up a lot with utilizing platforms like LinkedIn or any of the others, is, how do you automate it without sounding robotic, right? And I think the tool that that you use, the bdr.ai, tool, is really pretty amazing at that, because every message, or especially on the outreach is all personalized, right?

David Bush  37:44  
So yeah, and that's really where it comes down to taking you know AI and what AI creates, but then also putting your own personal touches to it, right? So if you put in a prompt and you said, you know AI, tell me what to say to this particular group of people inside of a digital outreach sequence, it would give you some examples of that, but that's where we provide more the personal guidance and support to help individuals to frame up their messages, to be more personable to them, rather than just taking whatever the AI suggests in terms of conversational content. So it's really a matter of, you know, having high tech combined with high touch. And some people think that that's, you know, scary, right? We asked people earlier on about who was fearful of speaking.

Dr. Dennis Cummins  38:30  
No one was fearful of anything

David Bush  38:32  
on Well, yeah, there was no fear at all. So we were talking to a good, a good crowd of people, but fearless people today, a lot of times we what we find is, is that people get caught up in the complexity, right? Is that they they don't know how to convert it. And just like what you're doing with your upcoming workshop, and what you're doing with your guidance and pro speaker Academy, is that you're just providing rails to run on. So you know, the train has the power to run on the rails, but where there are no railroad tracks, the train stops. And that's what I'm finding, is that there's very powerful, content rich experts that have lots of great things to say, but they don't have the track laid in front of them that allows them to just get up to a speed that's sustainable and get them to where they ultimately want to go. So imagine just a visual picture of a train I have my grandson was just over, and Thomas the Train is kind of all the jam for him right now. But think about a train that's just stuck on the track because there's no rails in front of them, or maybe there's a dividing line, and there's two different tracks that you can take, and you're not sure which one, so just having somebody there to help you to make a decision. And I don't know if you ever heard the phrase about the word decide, it means to kill off the other option. And so herbicide, homicide, pesticide. And all of those lead to death. So the death of indecision is making a decision and choosing to go down a path and become a conversation creator versus a con. Becoming a content creator, it's a big decision, because some of you think that content creation is the jam and you want to become that person. But if you haven't committed to doing all the things that content creators do, which is analyze the analytics and test and fail and test and fail and do it at a high level, you probably are never going to get the level of engagement that you want with your content.

Dr. Dennis Cummins  40:37  
And I think, you know, here's another C word that I'm going to throw out for, you know, for both of those, whether you're content or a conversation creator, I think it's really important that, you know, we as thought leaders, as authorities, as business owners, I think we all need to stay curious, right? Because, you know you're even you're talking about, hey, let's look at that post, and what can I contribute that adds value for everyone or clarifies the concept for everyone? So you know, yeah, that's important. Now, David, here's a great question. How do you transition from those types of comments? Let's talk about LinkedIn for now. How do you transition from those types of comments where we've created a conversation, but now I want to create commerce. Since we've thrown out all those C words today, right? How do you move from a conversation to Hey, what's the next step? What in your in your opinion? What do you think?

David Bush  41:38  
Yeah, it's, I would say, qualifying their interests. So Royce was just making comments about they had 6000 connections, and it's all about relationships. Well, if you have 6000 connections, you don't really know who's interested in what it is that you have to offer the world. And so you ask questions that help you to qualify their interest. And so if I was, you know, leveraging your individual opportunity is I'd be asking the question of, I'd send a message and I'd say, Hey, thanks for your post the other day. I appreciated the opportunity to contribute to it. I'm curious. Dennis, I help professionals to improve their ability to convert speaking opportunities into more revenue, and I've created a short little informational guide with some videos and some content that helps explain the top 10 tips of how to do that. Would you like me to share that with you? If the person says yes to that question, right? I might I try to make the question extremely easy to answer, yes or no, and with the AI and the automation of LinkedIn, if you ask a question that's simple to answer, AI and LinkedIn will actually put in a prompt that will make it to be easy for them to answer, yes, no, no, thanks. It'll basically provide those options for them. So what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to move a person from a comment on a post or a conversation and a connection that I recently made on LinkedIn to asking a question that tells me whether or not that they're interested in what I have to offer, and if they say no, it doesn't mean that I'm never going to communicate with them again, and I'm just going to ask a follow up question and say, just curious, but what is it that you're interested in right now, and is there any way that I can be a good, valuable connection in your network to help you to get it now? So I'm going to turn a no

Dr. Dennis Cummins  43:37  
to a I just want to time out on you for a second, because you just said something that I think is super, super important for everyone that's watching. Your question was something along the lines of, you know, hey, I help these sort of people. And then it was, I've got a four page, you know, workshop or manual or blueprint for you. Would you like me to send that to you here? What? What that just was everybody that was moving from an interest like, Hey, I'm just one of the connections that David has to now, I'm interested in what David has. He did not try to sell them something. He tried to help them, and if they want that help, that enables you to move that conversation to the next phase, where then you get to tell them a little bit more and then find out if this is of interest to them, and did that help, and is there any other way I could support you? So this is a way to to allow your audience and your your network to self identify as potential clients. And, by the way, I do the same thing in live rooms, you know, throughout the whole thing I'm listing, you know, I might, or over the course of if I'm doing a 60 min. A presentation talk about the challenges that people have. You know, for speakers who they do 60 minutes in front of a speech and everybody claps, but they don't sell anything at the end. They nobody buys their book, and nobody goes to their program, and nobody goes to their course, and it's because they missed all these pieces in the beginning. If those pieces are there. You know, when I do sales calls with folks, I have a conversation, which is 80% me asking them about them, 15% of me saying, Well, normally, when people are looking to do that, here's what we do, and I list these things off, and then I shut up for the other five and I go, any questions, and they go, this is the question that I get. How do I work with you? Oh, glad you asked, right? Because now I wasn't trying to get them to work with me. I'm not trying to sell my services. I got a lot of clients. I'm good, but I can help you if you want it, but you got to ask, right? It's like, there's a guy in a hole, and you're outside the hole, and you just reach down and go, Hey, if you'd like some help, here's my hand, but they have to grab it to get out. That's what we do. You know, you're doing it with your business side and your automation side. I'm doing it with speaking and and creating thought leadership from that avenue. And each and each and every one of you that are listening and watching right now, we have the opportunity to help other people just get better at it. Just get better at it. Find the professionals. You know, if it's David, great, if it's me, fantastic. We would love to have you as clients, if, if, after listening to us for now, or you think we're a good fit, reach out. We'd love to have a conversation with you, if not, find somebody else who can help you get to the next step. Because you're valuable and you've got skills and you've got talents, we got to start getting better at sharing that.

David Bush  46:55  
Yeah, and there's a lot of people that just they're they're not in a position right now where they have that piece of content that they can deliver to somebody that ends up delivering that value. I've met a lot of speakers, consultants, coaches, business owners, all of that stuff is inside their head and the own or it's inside it's built into their services. They don't have that lead magnet or that value piece that can give people education value and resources that attracts them to want to have a deeper conversation with you. But it really isn't that hard to create it, and especially using AI, you can end up building that cool building that cool tool by just, you know, taking one of your presentations and turning the transcripts into a 10 to 15 page PDF document. And there's people out there that would end up designing that document, and it would be very inexpensive. You could record one of your pieces of content and you could deliver your one hour presentation into small little bits and pieces. Is kind of like a mini course. I just put it in the live chat for everybody that's here live. You know, I had a LinkedIn article that I created on the 10 Tips to build trust, credibility and authority on LinkedIn. That's something that I oftentimes will offer to people that I meet with on LinkedIn to ask them the question, are you interested in some tips on how to build more trust, credibility and authority on LinkedIn? I wrote an article I wanted to be happy to share it here, and Roy said, permission is magical. Yes, I asked for permission, but I also give without permission. So I don't have to get your permission to give you something that I think is valuable, that I feel is something that would benefit you if you don't like it, that's on you. It's a gift. I didn't give it to you so that you would buy something. I gave it to you because I wanted to be a good connection. And that's another thing that I think a lot of people miss on LinkedIn or in any social media, is that you have a connection, but you don't have connection. And you know, if you have 6000 connections, you know, out of those 6000 connections, who have you really connected with? Who have you really communicated with, who have you really added value to? And I could tell you that, you know those 6000 people, not all of them really have a strong connection to you, but there may be 60 that do, and those 60 may be the clients that are paying you the revenue that's the most income in your entire organization, and those people, you probably haven't commented on their post. You haven't sent them anything that's valuable because you can't find them. And so just getting clarity of who are my most valuable connections on LinkedIn, and then who are my most valuable connections that I want to build more relationship with, and I want to truly connect with. And how can I do personalization at scale? So our system allows you to build out sequences and to build out messaging that's personalized to the individual, but it's not so specific that it couldn't be. Not sent to multiple people who you see value in and yeah, using, using personalization at scale, is an art form. It's not a science. It's not something that you just spray and pray and sell and tell you actually have to share and care and follow up.

Dr. Dennis Cummins  50:17  
David, what do you find is the biggest mistake? I mean, I know we talked about spray and pray. You know, is there any other big mistake that people are making on LinkedIn?

David Bush  50:30  
Yeah, I think that they're, they're scrolling. So scrolling is probably one of the biggest waste of time. It's a, it's a fun, you know, thing that you can do for just entertainment if you want to just scroll, but if you actually want to treat LinkedIn as a serious economic strategy, stop scrolling. Stop being reactive to what everybody else is posting, and be proactive. And have a strategy of what you're going to do and then measure the outcome. So a question I like to ask everybody is, you know, how many leads Did you generate from your time on LinkedIn? Because time is money, and if you spent, you know, 100 hours, and each one of those hours, I don't know, most people are spending somewhere in the ballpark of 10 hours a week minimum on LinkedIn, if you're using LinkedIn, to some extent. So 10 hours times four weeks is 40 hours. And if you earned $100 an hour, which would probably be on the low end for many of you, that's a lot of money. And if you're spending that much time on LinkedIn, what are you generating from it? And if you aren't generating a good ROI and getting an increasing dollar value on that time, you should be thinking about, where am I spending my time on that and how can I become more strategic, and how can I gain back more quality of life? Because a lot of the people, Dennis and I know that you share this as well, is that you know they're doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. And many people have done a lot of speaking events, they've done a lot of webinars, they've done a lot of presentations, and they're not generating revenue from it. And it's not that they're completely off base. They're just missing a couple of key elements, and a lot of that just comes to a plan, a strategy and accountability. Did you follow up and follow through? You talked about that in your presentation earlier about follow up is that, you know, the fortune is in the follow up. And what do most people not do follow so that's why they're struggling financially, or they're struggling to earn what they could earn, because they just don't have a good system, and they're not using automation or technology to help them with that. And the other

Dr. Dennis Cummins  52:39  
thing, David, you just said, you know, and it the same is true for for, you know, the automations, as it is for speaking, you know, when I when, when I walk people through that three day program, like, we literally, like, we demo something, we explain all the pieces and why they're there and why they're important, and then they do it, and they get all this feedback and all this kind of stuff. But I tell them, you know, you can mix them, you can move them around a little bit, but if you're missing one, things don't work as well, right? And you just said that about your automations. If you're missing a piece, well, that's great, you know, it's great up front, but then you miss that one nugget in the middle that causes it not to work. And if you're not evaluating that. If you don't have a system to keep track of that, which is what, what's great about what your team does? You don't know where it's broken, and you don't know how to fix it, and you can't say, oh, wow, we're getting this we're getting these meetings, we're having these calls. So for those of you that are listening, you know, having a consistent system in place is critical, especially when you're using, you know, online tools and automating and connecting with networks, and when you're addressing live audience. The same thing is true. You need to have a plan for how you're going to deliver that information in a way, and the way that I like to say it, it causes people to buy. It doesn't pressure them to buy. It allows them to buy just by the very nature of the way you deliver it. But there's a lot of components that, if you don't hit them, well, then they're going to shop elsewhere, and they're going to, you know, they're going to try to find the lowest price out there. When you compete on price, it's just a race to the bottom. You need to compete on class and connection a race to the bottom. That's funny, but it is right. I can get it for $1 cheaper, and then somebody else is going to do it for $1 cheaper than you know, and that's why you've got all this, this crap product out there, who were it's the bottom line. There's basically no margin. There's no There's no profit for the business owners. So they they're basically out of business after a while, or they're just delivering horrible stuff that's limited value. You know, deliver the value and then set your. Self apart, as unique as David has done, as I continue to try to do myself. You know, what makes you different than all the other people out there? And why should I work with you over anybody else? That is the message that you need to convey, whether it's on LinkedIn or your social networks or when you're speaking in front of live groups, that message and that message alone will get you wealthy. All right,

David Bush  55:23  
Dennis, I'm going to put you on the hot spot here, because I know Royce asked this question in his registration, and I saw that he was on here. So I want you to think about this. I'm going to fill in the gap. But what are the highest profit presentations? And while you think about that, I'm going to give everybody five things to evaluate when it comes to their LinkedIn outreach and how well they're doing in the five things that lead to success with digital outreach. The first one, do you have a good list of people that qualify as a good target market? Second is, does your profile represent the kind of person people would want to connect with for the services that you provide, and that goes back to the trust, credibility and authority. Is your messaging personalized, and does it lead to a conversation, or is it basically just pushing out information, like selling and telling? Fourth one is, are you making an offer that's irresistible, where people would definitely say yes. Why would they say no to that? They would be crazy to say no. And then the fifth one is, are you following up and following through being pleasantly persistent, not to be a pest, but are you being pleasantly persistent and re engaging people to make sure that they saw the message and that they had an opportunity to come back to you. So those are my final remarks about building digital outreach. And would love to talk to anybody, if they like, to learn more about bdr.ai, and what we do. But highest profit presentations,

Dr. Dennis Cummins  56:47  
Royce, are two questions at the same time, and these were actually on my list. So Royce had asked about the highest profit presentations, but Christian asked, how do you move from speaking events to getting paid to speak, right? And here's my answer, you always get paid to speak right. Sometimes you get paid up front, and sometimes you get paid in the back, right? And here's what I mean. So the highest profit presentations for me are always the ones where I'm promoting my own products or services. So I say a promotional talk. Remember, there's the educational talk, trainings. There's the motivational talk, inspiration, yay. It's amazing. Oh, my God, that one. And then there's the one in the middle where it's a little bit of all that is the storytelling. There's the education stuff, and then there's a here's how I can help you stuff that's the promotional talk that is, by far and away, the most profitable type of speaking you'll ever done, ever do. And so Christian every event that you do, even if you don't get paid up front. Now I get paid a lot of money to keynote, right? People bring me into Keynote, but I will also go to organizations, especially if they're my ideal market. So coming up later this spring, I'm speaking to the society of Association Executives. Now a society is a collection of associations. An association is a collection of business owners. My ideal client or business owners, I have been invited to speak to the society of Association Executives. These are the guys that run all of the associations that have all of my clients that are I will go and speak there for free, and I'm going to do a great job, and I'm going to let them know how to share my information with their individual associations so that I get in front of their business owners. I won't get paid at all to show up at this event. I guarantee you I am going to earn a lot of money by delivering fantastic service to their downline clients. So always think about, even if you're not going to get paid up front for your speaking event, how could you get paid on the back end? And that's about, you know, there's so many things. There's seeding, there's overcoming objections. There's storytelling, there's deciding what information to include, and, even more importantly, what information to exclude. How do you do your introduction? You know, everybody thinks that their call to action starts in the last 30 seconds of their presentation. It starts way at the beginning, and you move them along. So all the whole time you're moving along, they're like, going, Man, I like to work with that guy. And then when you get to the end and you say, well, here's how easy it is to work with me, they do that thing like you just said. It's an irresistible offer. It's like, I'd be crazy not to do that. Yeah.

David Bush  59:58  
So good. Well, I. So excited. We had an opportunity to chat with everybody, and thanks to everybody for your comments and feedback. Speak with dennis.com is the place to go if you want to book some time on Dennis calendar. Get some more information about the upcoming workshop and the wheat resources, anything else on contact information. That's the best way to do it.

Dr. Dennis Cummins  1:00:18  
That way, we can have a conversation and find out. Hey, listen. Are we a good fit? Can I help you? And at the very least, we're just going to become friends.

David Bush  1:00:27  
And if you want more AI tools, you want to learn more about how to do automation and digital outreach at scale using AI and leveraging LinkedIn. And if you want to create more content and strategy, check out. Bdr.ai, we'd love to have a conversation with you as well. So Dennis, it's my pleasure to join the stage. Our your presence was your present today. And thanks everybody, wishing you the very best, good seeing you all take care, everybody. Thanks for tuning in to the Business Builders playbook. If this episode gave you some plays that you can start running in your business today, hit subscribe and share with another revenue leader who's tired of the pipeline grind building Predictable Revenue isn't something you figure out alone. Whether you're looking to automate your prospecting with bdr.ai, or you just want to talk through the growth challenges you're facing, reach out. We help business leaders, just like you, to build systems that actually scale. And if you're ready to stop being your company's Highest Paid Prospector, let's have a conversation. Reach out to us@bdr.ai until next time, let's keep building you.